it was the night before the night before christmas we were all watching leni riefenstahѕs documentary of the 1936 berlin olympics bubbles eyed the screen quizzically, is that a finn? she gesticulated i like bubbles, she has a pair of dice tattooed on her behind pass the pindar said rabbi gandelman reaching for a volume of the theban poet gandelman, a six-foot-six 275-lb. daddy warbucks lookalike, is the first rabbi ever to score over 40 points in a wheelchair basketball game he refuses to marry although his congregation has offered him a succession of voluptuous high-iq virgins something in the way the eastern european women levitate themselves over the high-jump bar attracts me like no other lover sang bubbles' husband the reverend humberto perez we are all watching how do you spell jew? a new program produced by tennessee public television station wkpt each week a member of the tennessee state house of representatives is sent back in time to meet a famous jew from history this week rep. jeeter maloney tennessee's youngest state representative is sent back in history to rijnsburg, holland to meet the metaphysical philosopher baruch spinoza Judaism's most notoriously heretical luminary please have some kuchen and coffee spinoza says much obliged, drawls maloney sampling the kuchen, ummmmmmm yum… what did you call these — cookin? kuchen spinoza replies please help yourself to more i wonder how many of these kuchen you could stuff into my mouth maloney wonders out loud that's something upon which i have often speculated spinoza says and as maloney stretches his mouth wide open with both his hands spinoza stuffs three and finally four kuchen in there's a long somewhat uncomfortable silence i'm having a lot of trouble lately with my son jeeter jr., maloney finally says, all he seems to want to do is play video games what are video games? spinoza asks as we leave rijnsburg its inhabitants are sitting down to their customarily modest dinners of fish cakes and room-temperature fresca and as the sun sets chattering black-billed magpies lurch ungracefully into the cool tulip-scented evening air it is impossible to adequately describe my feelings of utter resignation and pessimism as i scanned bubbles' apartment and catalogued the moldering dishes of half-eaten food, the psychotic mascara-caked mannequins, the album covers and magazines tossed in a wild miscellany of intoxicated carelessness, the moaning emaciated cats inhaling and exhaling like bony accordions, the scampering roaches and silverfish, the Welch's grape juice bottle containing four ounces of liquid pep but i like bubbles, she has a tiny naked smurf tattooed between her breasts
tonight at maрison square garden the new york rangers disemboweled the boston bruins' goalie, brought a hibachi onto the ice, roasted his intestines and served them on toast points to the howling hometown fans my cousin my gastroenterologist is himself in the hospital after having been viciously attacked at a hawaiian luau he's got three potentially dangerous ukulele fragments lodged in his brain the doctor says jabbing at an x-ray with his pointer
i'm forging my new epic style in this dingy oubliette which stinks i mean the oubliette stinks not the style it stinks of sulfur and bile and burnt rubber and putrescent flesh viz all the ingredient odors of an epic style & of course i'm wearing the very down-home the very tight alchemist's jeans and the tempered industrial goggles there is my beautiful mute sister wheeling about the schoolyard like the last bright leaf of autumn a few hairs sprout from the crotch of her bikini bottom look at the paparazzi taking pictures of her! oh gaudy kitschy iridescent electroencephalogram of the insomniac brain how i love you how i love you
i want to tell you something but you're going to have to come sit over here so i can whisper it in your ear because it's extremely extremely confidential top secret information and if it ever leaked out that i told you they'd kill me who? (who'd kill a sweet guy like you?) the big boys would definitely sit on my sunglasses with their asses who are the big boys? the pope or the pope's valet de chambre i'm 99 % sure it would be one or the other what's that poking out from the top of your trousers it looks red and plastic he clears throat ah-hem ah-hem peels off awful smelly socks rolls them up and tosses them into a crystal wassail bowl 2 points she's like a little girl pulling at the leg of his trousers mister? mister? he's like camus preoccupied with finding a good station on his car radio and driving into a tree huh? where am i? he wakes up with a start it's too dark to distinguish animal from vegetable they've converted edison's black maria into a duplex come in i just moved so all i can offer you is a cushion on the floor frozen stolichnaya? decaffeinated tea? come sit over here so i can whisper in your ear it looks red and plastic i was visiting a netsilik eskimo in pelly bay whose name translated into english means dental pulp or periodontal membrane depending on one's glottal inflection and peggy lee called and said i'm frantic they're showing the final scene of knishing for keeps where peter minuit the ghost of wall street decrees that those who labor with their minds shall rule those who grovel with their hands and my tv's on the fritz so get over here right away so i got in the car and burned up the interstate and i stopped at a stuckey's and bought this red plastic dagger you can feel it for a buck that reminds me of what the comtesse de la tour du pin said about louis the sixteenth: "his sword was a perpetual embarrassment to him" how lapidary i can see it up in lights: HIS SWORD WAS A PERPETUAL EMBARRASSMENT TO HIM she turns on the television the local news is airing footage of bludgeoned birds the police say the birds were beaten with a seven-foot two-by-four a snow shovel and the stump of a sassafras tree what are you holding in your hand? the stump of a sassafras tree he says shaking his semi-erect penis at her not here not on the floor if maria theresa could give birth to marie antoinette in an armchair you can certainly make love to me on the poop deck of the black maria if you're going to take me to bed you have to tell me a bedtime story ok there was a nauseating rotten-egg odor in the air and mr. and mrs. becker walked to the jewelry store with clothespins on their noses we'd like a lovely pendant for our daughter Judith Judith is a very brilliant girl they boasted a very sweet girl an honest girl an attractive girl later while mrs. becker was prostrate on the floor as flat as a pancake as if she'd been run over by a steamroller the jeweler psychoanalyzed mr. becker why do you fear sexual intercourse so mr. becker i have a number of cysts on my penis mr. becker said and i'm hesitant about engaging in sexual relations with women because i'm scared that they'll think these cysts are venereal warts or tumors don't be silly the jeweler said the cysts will make intercourse all the more enjoyable for the women ill show you they went to the four seasons a very elegant restaurant on east fifty-second street in manhattan they sat down at a table and the jeweler opened up a copy of screw magazine to a page advertising dildos and vibrators and french ticklers and sure enough many of the devices were bumpy textured rough gnarled jagged see said the jeweler women pay for bumpy penises it makes it better for them mr. becker looked at the jeweler the jeweler looked at mr. becker it was a moment of intense gratification for both men we have a good relationship with each other mr. becker said the jeweler nodded earnestly yes we do later they went to the rodeo have one of mine the jeweler said offering becker a cigarette have one of mine becker said no have one of mine said the jeweler no have one of mine becker said have one of mine said the jeweler all right stop i want you to start loving me now but please do me one favor i want you to refer to my vagina as the jack teagarden pavilion in other words when the time comes and it's appropriate you'll say for instance i like the feel of your jack teagarden pavilion i like the smell of your jack teagarden pavilion this is the moment of ecstasy? oh yes this is the moment of ecstasy the ornamental tin rooster with large beady eyes of amber glass exploding in the jack teagarden pavilion what part of me do you feel the part where samson kills a thousand philistines with the jawbone of an ass what is the peculiar sound of our coitus the sound of arriving in sainte-anne de beauprй the land of lonesome pines where every night is moo shu pork night via dog sled the sound of three elderly spinster sisters whispering in a movie theatre in pointe-au-pic a small resort along the north shore of the saint lawrence river frequented by the 300-lb. president william taft yes the sound of sabbatai zevi sinking his scepter into the gooey terra firma of seventeenth-century turkey the folk music of flu season recorded by the ethnomusicologist with no name the concerto for comb and tinfoil based upon the moment i was conceived in my mother's womb the shrill dissonance of a korean lullaby the ludicrous billing and cooing of an uxurious husband the yodeling shanties of marat in his tub you are my teething ring my birdbath my litter box my abominable snowmobile my sizzling electric chair my not-so-sweet donkey kong! they pant in a crescendo of inflammatory climactic epithets once upon a time there was a man and a woman who had just finished making love she whispers absently entwining her fingers in the slack webbing of his lacrosse stick and they felt as if they were floating, like cafeteria trays in a space capsule, like secretaries in a pool the sex had made him feel strong and rugged like harry morgan in hemingway's to have and have not and he went to his typewriter and wrote: this is real tough macho autobiography, the kind shelley winters writes when she recounts biting the head off a mallard duck at the bear river migratory bird refuge in utah, a real premenstrual stunt, but i'm not interested in that gary gilmore hit-me-with-your-best-shot stuff anymore, fish are my central motif, goldfish, clams on the half shell, dolphin kinship structures, sole almondine, i'm trying to write a piece called the aesthetics of surface for an israeli semiotics journal for 500 israeli pounds, but i'm under the deadline gun, jack i'm putting lines of 99 % pure bogotб cocaine up my nose, i'm filling my enema bag with tequila i'm trying to get at the shimmering patina on the filmy superstratum of the surface, but i'm having wrenchingly vivid flashbacks of my mother flaying my thighs with an antenna i had to fight my way through workingclass polish neighborhoods every day on the way to the kidney dialysis unit it's rough, man, but i'm a rough super-macho motherfucker, jack i swagger around saying fuck you man, kiss my white ass, suck my hickory-smoked dick! i'm saying things like chacun а son gout oedipus rex, you schmuck but the sex had made her feel hostile and resentful that she had been cajoled and manipulated into losing control and exposing her passion to a virtual stranger men aren't worth the paper they're printed on she said and she grabbed his penis with both her hands and swung him over her head like an olympic hammer thrower and flung him through the living room window into a slow elliptical orbit around the earth and the russians thought he was american and the americans thought he was russian but we all knew that he was just a hapless naked man tumbling through space whose orbit once every year would bring him close enough to dayton ohio for schoolchildren there to discern his wistful fleeting hello good-bye, hello good-bye, hello good-bye